WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court handed a green light Thursday to the Trump administration in its effort to speed up the removal of those seeking asylum.
The court ruled that asylum-seekers claiming fear of persecution abroad do not have to be given a federal court hearing before quick removal from the United States if they initially fail to prove that claim.
The decision was written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
The case, one of many to come before the high court involving the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, concerned Sri Lanka native Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam. He was arrested 25 yards north of the Mexican border and immediately placed in expedited removal proceedings.
More: President Trump's immigration crackdown inundates Supreme Court
Immigration officials determined that Thuraissigiam did not have a credible fear of persecution, even though he is a member of Sri Lanka's Tamil ethnic minority that faces beatings and torture at the hands of the government.
"While aliens who have established connections in this country have due process rights in deportation proceedings, the court long ago held that Congress is entitled to set the conditions for an alien’s lawful entry into this country and that, as a result, an alien at the threshold of initial entry cannot claim any greater rights under the Due Process Clause," Alito wrote in a 36-page opinion.
In her dissent, Sotomayor said the system Congress established short-circuits an inquiry designed to determine whether asylum-seekers "may seek shelter in this country or whether they may be cast to an unknown fate."
"Today’s decision handcuffs the judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers," she wrote. "It increases the risk of erroneous immigration decisions that contravene governing statutes and treaties."
The court's other two liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed with the judgment but said they would have applied it only to Thuraissigiam's claim.
"Addressing more broadly whether the Suspension Clause protects people challenging removal decisions may raise a host of difficult questions," Breyer wrote, such as whether the same limit can apply to those picked up years after crossing the border, or to those claiming to be U.S. citizens.
During oral argument in March, Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservatives expressed concern that granting Thuraissigiam a hearing could lead to a significant expansion of new claims. His lawyer said about 9,500 asylum-seekers fit the same category.
Asylum seekers wait for news outside El Chaparral port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, on March 19, 2020.
Only 30 petitions for federal court hearings have been filed so far, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt said then. But Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler said the figure was closer to 100 and warned of "the potential for a flood" of cases if the Supreme Court ruled for Thuraissigiam.
The case represented a crucial test of the Trump administration's effort to speed the removal of thousands of migrants without granting federal court hearings. The fast-track process is allowed under a law passed by Congress in 1996.
The California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which has drawn Trump's ire for its decisions on immigration, ruled last year that efforts to remove asylum-seekers under such "expedited removal" procedures violated their constitutional rights.
The Justice Department argued that extending the streamlined process could add years of court wrangling. After losing the case, the administration in July expanded the expedited removal system to incorporate asylum-seekers apprehended anywhere in the country who have not been continuously present in the USA for two years.
The case is one of several challenging the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on migrants seeking asylum after crossing the Mexican border.
In February, a federal appeals court blocked the administration’s policy of returning asylum-seekers to Mexico to await court hearings, a practice immigrant rights advocates have denounced as inhumane and deadly.
Last September, the justices temporarily upheld a different policy denying asylum to those who do not seek protection first from a country they pass through, such as Mexico.
But in 2018, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a policy aimed at denying asylum to migrants crossing the border illegally rather than at designated crossings.
Trump's three-year crackdown on immigration has led to a surge in lawsuits reaching the Supreme Court, where a rebuilt conservative majority increasingly is paying dividends for him.
In the past year, the justices also let the administration deter poor immigrants and redirect military funds to build a wall along the southern border.
The high court has heard arguments in eight immigration cases since its term began in October, including a challenge to Trump's plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that enables nearly 650,000 undocumented immigrants to work without fear of deportation.
The program was created by President Barack Obama in 2012 to help young, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. During oral argument in November, the court's conservative justices said the administration had ample policy reasons to end it. But the high court ruled 5-4 against the Trump administration in a surprise ruling written by Roberts. Trump has said he will try again to wind down the DACA program.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court upholds Trump administration on removing asylum-seekers
Justices rule for Trump administration in deportation caseMARK SHERMAN,
Associated Press•June 25, 2020
The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, early Monday, June 15, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can deport some people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge.
The high court's 7-2 ruling applies to people who are picked up at or near the border and who fail their initial asylum screenings, making them eligible for quick deportation, or expedited removal.
The justices ruled in the case of man who said he fled persecution as a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, but failed to persuade immigration officials that he faced harm if he returned to Sri Lanka. The man was arrested soon after he slipped across the U.S. border from Mexico.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the high-court opinion that reversed a lower-court ruling in favor of the man, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who was placed in expedited removal proceedings that prohibit people who fail initial interviews from asking federal courts for much help.
Immigration officials handled Thuraissigiam's case as a part of process Congress created “for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country," Alito wrote.
He noted that more than three-quarters of people who sought to claim asylum in the past five years passed their initial screening and qualified for full-blown review.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with the outcome in this case, but did not join Alito's opinion.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty." She was joined by Justice Elena Kagan.
Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case in the Supreme Court, said the outcome will make it hard to question the actions of immigration officials at the U.S. border. “This decision will impact potentially tens of thousands of people at the border who will not be able to seek review of erroneous denials of asylum," Gelernt said.
Since 2004, immigration officials have targeted for quick deportation undocumented immigrants who are picked up within 100 miles of the U.S. border and within 14 days of entering the country. The Trump administration is seeking to expand that authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court threw out a trial judge’s ruling that had blocked the expanded policy. Other legal issues remain to be resolved in the case.
The administration has made dismantling the asylum system a centerpiece of its immigration agenda, saying it is rife with abuse and overwhelmed by meritless claims. Changes include making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration court, denying asylum to anyone on the Mexican border who passes through another country without first seeking protection there, and flying Hondurans and El Salvadorans to Guatemala with an opportunity to seek asylum there instead of the U.S.
On Monday, the Trump administration published sweeping new procedural and substantive rules that would make it much more difficult to get asylum, triggering a 30-day period for public comment before they can take effect.
The United States became the world’s top destination for asylum-seekers in 2017, according to UN figures, many of them Mexican and Central American families fleeing endemic violence.
___
Associated Press writer Elliott Spagat in San Diego contributed to this rep
Only 30 petitions for federal court hearings have been filed so far, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt said then. But Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler said the figure was closer to 100 and warned of "the potential for a flood" of cases if the Supreme Court ruled for Thuraissigiam.
The case represented a crucial test of the Trump administration's effort to speed the removal of thousands of migrants without granting federal court hearings. The fast-track process is allowed under a law passed by Congress in 1996.
The California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which has drawn Trump's ire for its decisions on immigration, ruled last year that efforts to remove asylum-seekers under such "expedited removal" procedures violated their constitutional rights.
The Justice Department argued that extending the streamlined process could add years of court wrangling. After losing the case, the administration in July expanded the expedited removal system to incorporate asylum-seekers apprehended anywhere in the country who have not been continuously present in the USA for two years.
The case is one of several challenging the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on migrants seeking asylum after crossing the Mexican border.
In February, a federal appeals court blocked the administration’s policy of returning asylum-seekers to Mexico to await court hearings, a practice immigrant rights advocates have denounced as inhumane and deadly.
Last September, the justices temporarily upheld a different policy denying asylum to those who do not seek protection first from a country they pass through, such as Mexico.
But in 2018, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a policy aimed at denying asylum to migrants crossing the border illegally rather than at designated crossings.
Trump's three-year crackdown on immigration has led to a surge in lawsuits reaching the Supreme Court, where a rebuilt conservative majority increasingly is paying dividends for him.
In the past year, the justices also let the administration deter poor immigrants and redirect military funds to build a wall along the southern border.
The high court has heard arguments in eight immigration cases since its term began in October, including a challenge to Trump's plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that enables nearly 650,000 undocumented immigrants to work without fear of deportation.
The program was created by President Barack Obama in 2012 to help young, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. During oral argument in November, the court's conservative justices said the administration had ample policy reasons to end it. But the high court ruled 5-4 against the Trump administration in a surprise ruling written by Roberts. Trump has said he will try again to wind down the DACA program.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court upholds Trump administration on removing asylum-seekers
Justices rule for Trump administration in deportation caseMARK SHERMAN,
Associated Press•June 25, 2020
The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, early Monday, June 15, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can deport some people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge.
The high court's 7-2 ruling applies to people who are picked up at or near the border and who fail their initial asylum screenings, making them eligible for quick deportation, or expedited removal.
The justices ruled in the case of man who said he fled persecution as a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, but failed to persuade immigration officials that he faced harm if he returned to Sri Lanka. The man was arrested soon after he slipped across the U.S. border from Mexico.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the high-court opinion that reversed a lower-court ruling in favor of the man, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who was placed in expedited removal proceedings that prohibit people who fail initial interviews from asking federal courts for much help.
Immigration officials handled Thuraissigiam's case as a part of process Congress created “for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country," Alito wrote.
He noted that more than three-quarters of people who sought to claim asylum in the past five years passed their initial screening and qualified for full-blown review.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with the outcome in this case, but did not join Alito's opinion.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty." She was joined by Justice Elena Kagan.
Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case in the Supreme Court, said the outcome will make it hard to question the actions of immigration officials at the U.S. border. “This decision will impact potentially tens of thousands of people at the border who will not be able to seek review of erroneous denials of asylum," Gelernt said.
Since 2004, immigration officials have targeted for quick deportation undocumented immigrants who are picked up within 100 miles of the U.S. border and within 14 days of entering the country. The Trump administration is seeking to expand that authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court threw out a trial judge’s ruling that had blocked the expanded policy. Other legal issues remain to be resolved in the case.
The administration has made dismantling the asylum system a centerpiece of its immigration agenda, saying it is rife with abuse and overwhelmed by meritless claims. Changes include making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration court, denying asylum to anyone on the Mexican border who passes through another country without first seeking protection there, and flying Hondurans and El Salvadorans to Guatemala with an opportunity to seek asylum there instead of the U.S.
On Monday, the Trump administration published sweeping new procedural and substantive rules that would make it much more difficult to get asylum, triggering a 30-day period for public comment before they can take effect.
The United States became the world’s top destination for asylum-seekers in 2017, according to UN figures, many of them Mexican and Central American families fleeing endemic violence.
___
Associated Press writer Elliott Spagat in San Diego contributed to this rep
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